Year End Review: Personal

It is the wise man indeed to takes stock of himself from time to time and the end of the year is as good a time as any. 

We feel like we did more and better with the girls this year. We made a little more effort to do things with them like sitting down with them and building legos. One's a teen and one's a tween, so there's only so much one can do. We know nothing about hair, makeup and clothes. Enjoy your kids while you can, warns one PSA.

As far as things go with Mrs. Stroock, they're fine. We meet her needs: mental, emotional, spiritual and of course [Don't say it-Ed] physical. [Knobhead-Ed]. Often we're a pair of professionals shuttling kids around town. After twenty-eight years together, twenty-four of them married, I still stop what I'm doing to watch her pick something up. I mean, damn. It ain't every man that can say that after nearly 30 years. 

We could have dealt better with certain relatives. Those relatives don't necessarily make it easy but we can't help but feel part of the problem is our own intransigence [it usually is-Ed].

We changed our medication regimen. We're not taking anti-depressants anymore, though we still take mood stabilizers. The latter keep you from chucking the remote across the room. We had meant to blog more about this issue in 2021, but never really did. 

We had sworn to pay less attention to politics in 2021. [Oh that's a good one. I mockingly laugh at you-Ed]. We'll try again. [Yeah, sure-Ed]. There are some really good twitter follows, though. Cernovich, Ian Miles Cheong, and the great Stephen L. Miller. 

We remain numb to sports and are loving it. We do have a morbid fascination with the Giants ineptitude but remain completely indifferent to the New York Yankees. Try telling us that in 2001. 

As chronicled throughout, we had a great year at the gym with tonnes of running and weightlifting. The later has been extremely successful, the best programme of our life. We began the year weighing 245 and finish about 252. That's all muscle. We know this because our pants are looser. The treadmill went fine but we do notice long term fatigue with our speed plateauing at 3.7-8. Running a 4.0 is difficult. Maybe it's just age. Which sounds like an excuse since there are men at the gym ten years older than us who are running a lot faster. We don't feel really good after more than a few days off at the gym. That's a (not unusual) problem we should learn to deal with.

We had an appointment with our cardiologist last week, the one who took a look at our artery and said, '95% blockage'. He said we looked fitter and trimmer. Our blood pressure was great and he pronounced himself pleased. 

We are a bit more handy around the house than we were last year. Mrs. Stroock gave us various small projects to do while she and the girls are gone. Yesterday we painted the basement stairwell. You can tell we did it and not a pro. But still. It's always been a sore spot with us that we're not naturally handy. At 48 it's time to stop letting it bother us. 

We're probably a bit better than we were on 12/28/20 and hope to be a bit better on 12/12/22.